Discussing a
phenomenon known as the Long Tail and its effect on web
content providers,
Wikipedia states: “Web content
businesses with broad coverage like Yahoo!, CNET or even
TheStreet.com may be threatened by the rise of smaller
Web sites that focus on niches of content, and cover
that content better than the larger sites.” The power of
blogs is having a similar effect on media sites and
consumption.

According to
an
analysis by David Sifry, founder of Technorati, the
most influential media sites remain the most well-funded
sites, such as The New York Times and CNN. However, he
notes that blogs are gaining currency, based on a new
measurement.

According to
Sifry, the influence of a particular blog can be
measured by the number of people linking to the blog. In
his
State of the Blogosphere, he notes, “the number of
people linking to you is a very powerful measurement of
your influence or authority with those people - because
if nothing else, those people are spending some
attention on you.” When considered, this makes sense. If
a number of influential websites link to a particular
blog, then the readers of those sites can find the blog
through those links.

This measure
of influence indicates that traditional media sites –
The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Yahoo!, etc. –
still lead in influencing people, as they have the most
sites linking to them. However, some blogs are beginning
to challenge these numbers. Instapundit and Boing Boing
are the two top blogs in a recent survey, each of them
boasting more links than USA Today, Fox News, Reuters or
Salon.com.

Considering
that blogging is a relatively new phenomenon, having
caught fire just in the last few years, the influence
exerted by these weblogs is considerable. Just as
important, Sifry notes that many new blogs are gaining
traction (See the
Technorati Top 100).

“This also
has implications for enlightened marketers and media
companies,” Sifry notes. “There is power in the
conversations going on around you, and not necessarily
from the places that you'd ordinarily expect. Companies
that work in conjunction with the trends going on in the
long tail: e.g. fostering peoples voices, listening to
and incorporating their comments and feedback, and
fostering a community, have a tremendous opportunity
awaiting them.”